Rabat – A shepherd near Djebel Kissane in Zagora, a city in the Draa-Tafilalet region of southeastern Morocco, found on Saturday the body of Naima, a 5-year-old girl that had been missing since August 17.
Moroccan television channel 2M reported on Sunday that Naima’s cause of death is still not clear.
“I was shocked,” the girl’s father told Moroccan media.
He said local authorities went to the place where the shepherd discovered the girl’s remains.
The father identified his daughter from her clothes.
Shocked and in tears, the father called on Moroccan authorities to investigate the case and determine whether the girl was murdered or if she died of “natural causes.”
The father said he has no issues with anybody in the region that could push someone to murder his daughter in cold blood.
Comedian Mohamed Bassou expressed compassion with the family of the victim and denounced the increase of crimes against children.
While Naima’s cause of death is still unclear, Bassou called for the death penalty for “children killers.”
The case of the missing girl in Zagora comes amid national outrage and anger over crimes against children that erupted after the death of an 11-year-old boy in Tangier.
On September 11, Moroccan police found the body of Adnane Bouchouf buried near his house after he was kidnapped and raped.
Police arrested four suspects, including the 24-year-old main perpetrator.
The murder pushed some activists in Morocco to call for the death penalty for the pedophilia suspect, who killed Adnane in cold blood after raping him.
Other activists opposed calls for the death penalty, asking the government to give the suspect a severe punishment such as life in prison.
Stephanie Willman Bordat, an international human rights lawyer and women’s rights activist, told Morocco World News earlier this month that the “punishment of perpetrators should be based on objectivity. It should be decided by objective people, like judges.”
The activist called on people condemning such crimes to step outside and do hard work to raise awareness against the crimes and organize meetings with local authorities to share thoughts and ways about how to limit such crimes.
She also called for a detailed legal framework to deal with child abuse.
“The real problem is that the law does not create a framework or say anything about all of the steps in the process before that gets you to the conviction. There is nothing in the law or regulations about reporting the crimes.”
